Home Sweet Home

Making my first permanent home (outside from parents and rental apartments), I took several months prior to my wedding for total renovation. The townhouse is a small space of aprox 90m2 (900 sq ft) with three levels, totaling to aprox 300m2 (3000sq ft) house.

I have repainted the exterior from a dark shade of grey, to which my husband said it looks like concrete, to a light grey and finally to a nice clean white color.
Had plenty of fun making our new home without spending too much money.

Before- Waiting Area
AfterBefore - Making the DeckAfterBefore- Making for 2 personal spacesAfter

Before

After
Before

After

Putting in the Furnitures

After installing the wallpaper and lighting, next thing we did was to furnish our apartment with furnitures. For 6 months, we were without much furnitures other than our beds and wardrobe, it was cozy but everything seemed so messy and cluttered.

I had done my homework of pre-selecting the pieces from Casamia , a furniture concept store quite similar to US Crate & Barrel, in Bundang area and cutting the furniture pictures from their catalog.

From the hand-drawn grid page paper, it was so much easier to place all the furniture measurements, making sure they fit our rooms.
I had to convince my husband that the L-shape sofa will fit the room by showing him this draft too. He was a little dubious of the sofa until it arrived and placed in the living room.

And so the L-shape sofa fits. We even got it sit comfortably in between the AC and bookshelf. I even get to have my workspace in the living room. My husband did a great job organizing my mess and actually, he's the one who organized most of the spaces.

Kitchen & Dining Room Makeover

Kitchen is the space where I feel I'm in control and also the only space that I constantly clean. The original tiles were from the 90s and are quite bland with the whole country look. I decided that clean white tiles would make the kitchen look cleaner and wider.

My husband has a preference of stripes. He chose this stylish white on matte white tile and rust-colored mosaic tile for the "point". The white tiles makes the kitchen look cleaner and the mosaic gives a little punch of color.

Since I picked a grey sparkly wallpaper for kitchen and living room, we try to furnish with colors to make it less bland. I have a little problem of how the kitchen is too open... I think I will try to shop for a nice screen seperator to cover the sink background.

My mother-in-law took me for lighting shopping after the wallpaper. We went to Eujiro area for the lighting. It was drizzling so it was not the best time to stroll to find a nice store. I'm relieved that I managed to escape the 1st store we stepped in. My mother-in-law is a sweetheart, she dislike making inconvenience to others, meaning sales people too. We saw some things and she would feel obliged to buy from the store.

Our second stop was a gem of a store, I was glad they carry some nice, straight-forward pieces that I knew I would like and thus, our stop to settle for our lighting shopping.

As impressed as I was with the store, I spot this chandelier and I knew I have seen the exact same thing somewhere before but I couldn't remember just what brand it is. Its price tag was above what we are able to afford and the kindly salesman took us a floor down to show us another "similar" piece.

That "similar" piece is an imitation with swarovksi crystals but one tenth the price tag. I had never been so happy with an imitation!So while being happy looking at my chandelier in my kitchen, I search for the original chandelier.

Its called Cellula and the real thing looks like this

Our humble dining area

Wallpaper Effect

I just love artistic wallpaper with yummy colors from pastels to vibrant prints. I'm more inclined towards whimsical designs and its great that my husband shares similar taste and vision on how our apartment should look like.

We both like vintage prints and also Asian-theme wallpaper so it was quite easy to pick out our favorite wallpapers.

I have always have an obsession with wallpapers and I spent hours and days to look for inspiration. Osborne & Little has always been a favorite and also because its slightly friendlier to the pocket. There are many independent wallpaper companies in US and EU but its difficult to buy the rolls and have them shipped over...

images from osborne&little and flavor paper

Second row is Flavor Paper, I love the Kabloom collection in white and gold. They will definitely look luxe enough for dining room or entertainment areas. The sakura flowers are pretty for powder room. Click here to view more of their flavorful and original wallpapers.

The first row is Osborne& Little, click here to view more of their products. They have the many different color schemes and I believe their Asuka flower print triggered the global trend of sakura printed wallpapers.

image from Interiors Europe

Asuka is very pretty but they are now quite over-exposed. Last year, I fell in love with them when I visited a wallpaper boutique and was quoted EU50+/roll and later I saw in Oct 06 Domino Mag in Claire Forlani's room. I almost bought some rolls but the shipment and freight was not only expensive and it was a headache for me to be bothered with.

As pretty as Asuka is, so does it carry out the trend. I see them everywhere in Seoul especially, mostly in ladies beauty places. I can't tell if thats the real deal or the imitation.

image from Seoul Wallpaper

Since we are renovating our place in Seoul, we have to localize and trust me, South Korea has some of the most beautiful wallpapers! I'm not talking about textures but prints. They are very much up to the trends.
Housing in Seoul is very expensive and thus, homes are smaller. With small space, South Koreans creatively made certain walls as their 'point' - walls they want to stand out from the others.

The first row is Cosmos (If you look closely on Cosmos pic, you can see that the left picture feature wallpaper that look similar to the Asuka from Osborn& Little. Hmm...) and the second row is Seoul Wallpaper .

Not only does the wallpaper looks great, various of the wallpaper company boast eco-friendliness of the vinyl wallpaper they manufacture. We went along to order our wallpaper mostly from Seoul Wallpaper, most of the top wallpaper companies. They have a collection called Oksusu, means corn in english and as the name said the wallpaper is made of corn. Above, the advertisement for the Oksusu collection found on magazine.

Of course, they are more premium-priced compared to the other collection but their texture feels different to the touch.

Above is from Ezen collection and the red 'point' wall is from the Oksusu collection. I try to be careful not to mix the vintage print and the asian print clashing from one another. The blue vintage print is for the hidden hallway towards guestroom while the splashy red Asian sakura print is in the center of hallway.

The colors above dont do justice of the wallpaper. I just positively love my red sakura wallpaper. It has a nice gold glitter halo around it.

The Renovation

Finally, I was given the chance for a total makeover of our apartment. Our apartment has a great location but it is an old property and thus, everything inside was old.
Living in Seoul and having handicap in the language, I am very dependent on my husband and my in-laws to source for the renovation materials needed.



I'm not a interior designer, not aspiring to be but I do lavish a lot of attention to the renovation. I didnt have the blueprint of our apartment so I had to measure the rooms by my 3-meter measuring tape. Afterwards, its all basic sketchings to show my husband and later, the ration measurements into the layout.